Housing Assistance Corporation Blog

Imagine living in a home without any electricity or running water. For HAC’s Al DiMuzio, he didn’t have to imagine it. He actually experienced it, roughly 35 years ago.

“When I first moved to Maine and bought a property, I lived off the grid to understand how those things can be extras,” he said. “I had a well for water, candles and gaslights for lights and used a hand pump for the shower. I called it voluntarily simplicity. I had heard the term used and I liked it a lot. It was really a simpler life, not necessarily an easier one.”

While he eventually returned to the comforts we all enjoy, those early experiences in Maine have colored his work at HAC where he has served as an auditor for single-family and multi-family homes in the agency’s Energy and Repair Department for nearly seven years. “Within the context of this department, we have a lot of grateful clients and there’s a satisfaction in helping them not only reduce their energy costs, but making Cape Cod’s carbon footprint a little smaller since they’re saving a tremendous amount of electricity and saving gas and oil with the insulation we do,” he said.

In December, DiMuzio was given the opportunity to enact even greater change when he was named the interim director of the department. He will replace longtime staffer Nancy Davison who is retiring this year.

DiMuzio arrived at HAC in 2010 with four decades’ worth of experience in the construction industry that began on Nantucket in the early 70s following a stint in the U.S. Army. “From there I went to Maine and did all sorts of construction work including residential, commercial, federal jobs, sewer installations, foundations and framing, the whole nine yards,” he said.

DiMuzio, who grew up in Framingham, returned to Massachusetts in 1998 to be closer to family. He spent the majority of the next 11 years employed as a finish carpenter with E.J. Jaxtimer Builder before the economy collapsed in 2009. Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Department of Veterans Affairs, DiMuzio was certified as a building analyst by the Building Professionals Institute, authorizing him to conduct energy audits. “Within six weeks the job was advertised here [at HAC] and I was interviewed and lucky enough to get it,” DiMuzio said.

While his initial focus was on single-family homes, the bulk of his work has been on auditing and weatherizing multi-family homes owned by local public housing authorities and landlords of affordable units.

Davison credited DiMuzio for overseeing HAC’s multi-family weatherization program. “When we went through a restructuring three years ago to separate out our multi-family work from single-family, Al was the first one who said, ‘Yes, I want to do it,’” Davison said. “That is the type of motivation he has. If anything comes up that’s a new function or responsibility, he is always the one who volunteers to do it.”